Frida Kahlo

(1907-1954)

Frida Kahlo began to paint in 1925 while recovering from a streetcar accident
that left her permanently disabled. She underwent more than thirty operations
in the course of her life, and many of her approximately two hundred paintings
directly relate to her experiences with physical pain. They also chronicle her
turbulent relationship with Diego Rivera.

Kahlo met Rivera in 1928 and married him in 1929. She shared his faith in
communism and passionate interest in the indigenous cultures of Mexico. Rivera
encouraged Kahlo in her work, extolling her as authentic, unspoiled and
primitive, and stressing the Indian aspects of her heritage. During this
period "Mexicanidad," the fervent embrace of pre-Hispanic Mexican history and
culture, gave great currency to the notion of native roots. At the same time,
being seen as a primitive provided an avenue for recognition for a few women
artists. Kahlo, who had Indian blood on her mother’s side, was of
Hungarian-Jewish descent on her father’s. Although initially a self-taught
painter, she was, through her relationship with Rivera, soon travelling in the
most sophisticated artistic circles. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine that
anyone who shared Rivera’s life could have remained artistically naive.
Presumably because it generated respect and imparted credibility in the art
world, Kahlo encouraged the myth of her own primitiveness—in part by adopting
traditional Mexican dress—and it stayed with her throughout her career. During
her lifetime, Kahlo did not enjoy the same level of recognition as the great
artists of Mexican muralism, Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros. However, over the
last two decades that has changed and today Kahlo’ s idiosyncratic, intensely
autobiographical work is critically and monetarily as prized as that of her
male peers, sometimes more so.

Kahlo and Rivera divorced briefly in 1939, remarrying in 1940. She appears in
several of Rivera’s murals, notably as a communist militant in his Corrido de
la revoluci Un proletaria, repartiendo armas (Ballad of the proletarian
revolution, distributing arms) at the Ministry of Education in Mexico City.

Kahlo’s paintings, especially her self-portraits, begin as the most personal
statements imaginable. Yet they somehow transcend the here-and-now to tap into
something universal, and it is that transcendence which has lifted Kahlo’s
stature as artist and popular icon to an unprecedented level for a Mexican
figure, male or female.